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Does a first-person possessive pronoun have to come last if it is in a list with others?"

"My irresponsible sister loves jewelry, so she took both Sally's and mine.

"The same room was marked on Joe's and my map."

I know it is much better to simply use a plural pronoun such as our or their, but I can not find the answer to this anywhere.

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  • I would say "mine and Sally's", and "mine and Joe's map". However I can't give a formal explanation why so I'll just leave this as a comment.
    – Max Williams
    Commented Jun 27, 2016 at 7:54
  • Note that "mine" is a predicative adjective that doesn't directly attach to the noun (i.e. "jewelry"), so the order of possessives doesn't matter so much - I think it comes down to the particular sentence and how it sounds or what emphasis you want to give. I probably would use either order equally often. Whereas "my" is an attributive adjective that would normally be immediately followed by the noun (i.e. "map"), so it would sound weird to say "my and Joe's map". But maybe someone can post a more learned answer on this!
    – Chappo Hasn't Forgotten
    Commented Jun 27, 2016 at 8:18

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I don't think there are any hard and fast rules on whether you put yourself first or last. I would however amend the second example, which at the moment doesn't clearly indicate whether it is a map shared by Joe and yourself, or you and Joe both have separate maps. Use either "...on Joe's' map and on mine" or "...on the map that Joe and I were using" to make this clear.

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